Bound for Glory (1976)

Directed by

Hal Ashby

Genre

drama film, biographical film, musical film

Country

United States

Runtime

2h 28m

Rated

12

Rating

6.9 of 10 from 85 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This biographical film follows folk singer Woody Guthrie as he travels through the Dust Bowl and California during the Great Depression. It shows his efforts to give a voice to struggling migrant workers through his music.

earthybittersweetslow-pacedhumanevisually lyricalmelancholichopefulgrounded

What happens

Bound for Glory is a 1976 American biographical film directed by Hal Ashby, produced by folk music impresario and Woody Guthrie's manager Harold Leventhal and loosely adapted by Robert Getchell from Guthrie's 1943 partly fictionalized autobiography Bound for Glory. The film stars David Carradine as folk singer Woody Guthrie, with Ronny Cox, Melinda Dillon, Gail Strickland, John Lehne, Ji-Tu Cumbuka and Randy Quaid. Much of the film is based on Guthrie's attempt to humanize the desperate Okie Dust Bowl refugees in California during the Great Depression. Bound for Glory was the first motion picture in which inventor/operator Garrett Brown used his new Steadicam for filming moving scenes. Director of photography Haskell Wexler won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography at the 49th Academy Awards. All of the main events and characters, except for Guthrie and his first wife, Mary, are entirely fictional. The film ends with Guthrie singing his most famous song, "God Blessed America for Me" (subsequently retitled "This Land Is Your Land"), on his way to New York, but, in fact, the song was composed in New York in 1940 and forgotten by him until five years later. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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